Announcing Vancity's Change Everything: an online community conversation on change | Social Signal

Think "financial institution", and you likely think of pinstripes, vaults and armed guards. Oh, and a powerful, deep-seated aversion to change.

So it'll probably startle a lot of people to see the latest project from Vancity, Canada's largest credit union. ChangeEverything.ca is an online community targeted (but not limited) to residents of Vancouver, Victoria and B.C.'s Lower Mainland. We spent the past few months building it, and launched a few days ago.

Here's how it works: Once you register, you can begin listing changes you'd like to make: as personal as changing your hairstyle or getting your bike out of storage, or as broad a global transformation as you can imagine.

Then you start blogging about your progress toward making that change. But the real substance of the site happens when someone comes across your change and gets inspired; they can join it. Now both of you are blogging, discussing, and potentially collaborating on making the change happen.

This is one of those cases where building the site is only half the battle; you have to work ceaselessly to foster a thriving online community. Fortunately, Vancity has hired a terrific moderator for ChangeEverything.ca, Kate Dugas. And we'll be working closely with Kate and Vancity in the months to come to ensure the site's underlying functions and design give the community it needs to take root, grow and, yes, change.

The feedback we're receiving, even in these early days, is wonderful. The blog OpenSourceCU (home, by the way, of the best list of credit union blogs you'll find anywhere) calls ChangeEverything.ca "the best example of any financial institution successfully using the social web (blogging, user-generated content, building a true online community). Wells Fargo should be taking notes along with every credit union with a culture open enough to participate in social media with their members."

We're also getting some constructive suggestions from folks like Darren Barefoot, Vancouver's leading blogger and the one-half of the tech PR duo Capulet Communications.

In a blog post where he compliments the design (thanks!) and advises some changes to make the information architecture easier to understand, he says, "Also credit Vancity for a taking a big risk on this project, which really has nothing to do with them besides their brand in the banner." Agreed.

We'd love to see you at ChangeEverything.ca. As OpenSourceCU says, "You must visit the site and see for yourself.It’s exactly how the brand of a 'credit union' is supposed to be represented. Efforts like this can change the entire industry/movement/whatever-you-care-to-call-it."